Fingers appeared in front of my face and snapped. I was startled back into the present by Colly, who was lounging across the table from me.
“I thought you’d make fun of me,” I said.
“For what?” he asked.
“For not knowing how to read. For being a bumbling bumpkin, basically,” I said.
He looked out the window for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. In the dim light of the library, his eyes were darker than I had ever seen them before.
“That’s not your fault. Why would I make fun of you for it? You want to learn, and that’s the important thing. You wouldn’t have wandered in here listening in on everyone’s conversations for the past few months if you didn’t,” he said.
My mouth fell open. “Wait a minute. You knew that’s what I was doing? When did you figure out that I couldn’t read?” I demanded.
I could feel my face growing hot. What must he have thought of me? He probably thought I was a fool. He probably told the prince as much, too, to stay away from that idiot prisoner.
But Colly answered my question gently. “I figured it out pretty quickly,” he said. “You were attentive in class but you didn’t speak. You came into the library and I never once saw you read a book. In a library. And you aren’t the sort to go make out behind the book stacks like the students who just come to make out behind the book stacks. So I asked myself what you could be doing, and I decided you were listening to conversations to pick up as much as you could. The more I watched you, the more I was sure I was right.”
“So you were watching me?”
“It’s my job to watch everything,” he said.
My jaw hung slightly open as he talked. Sure, I had noticed some of the students doing the make-out thing, Nerys particularly, even Kayka on one or two occasions. But of course that’s not what I had been coming to the library for. And Colly had noticed all of it.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asked.
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “You could have offered to teach me sooner,” I said, with a slight grin.
Colly threw back his head and laughed. Whatever he had expected me to say, it wasn’t that. “You could have asked at any time,” he said.
Then he got down to business.
He pulled a book out of his bag. I had been expecting one of our textbooks, but this wasn’t that, it looked more like a picture book, with painted images on the pages. When he showed it to me I saw that there were only a couple of sentences per page, and only a few words. All the reading was accompanied by pictures.
“Let’s start here,” he said.
He leaned forward and started to talk, and for a moment I didn’t move. I knew that the moment I leaned forward, everything would change. If I allowed Colly to help me, who was to say who else I’d need help from?
I had never willingly allowed anyone to help me in my life, and I had scraped by just fine, I told myself. In the life I used to lead, that had worked. I could live by myself, I could steal on my own, I could run on my own, I could be free on my own.
But this was a new life.
A different life.
The kingdom was tumbling toward something dangerous, down to a field of fire. Once the kingdom reached that basin, all hell would break loose, that much was clear.
And here was a prince’s bodyguard using his free time to teach me to read.
Maybe he wouldn’t call us friends, but I would call us the best of friends. Once I accepted his help, then I would owe him.
What would he want in return? What was I willing to give up to learn to read?
I bit my lip and pondered the situation.
Colly’s long eyelashes fluttered a bit as he waited for me to lean forward, to really pay attention to what he was saying.
I asked myself again, what would I give up? But I already knew the answer. That’s what was terrifying.
To be able to read and unlock every single story in this library, hundreds of thousands of millions of words. The number was too high to count.
I would give up anything.
I leaned forward and listened.
At the end of the night Colly said I was a fast study, but I wasn’t so certain.
I felt more like an idiot. I had trouble with the words, although according to Colly I had done well for someone who had only worked on it for an hour.
Some of the words just didn’t sound like they should sound, I thought rebelliously. I was never going to learn this mess of lines forming shapes put in a certain order that then conveyed the world to you.
“I have to work tomorrow night,” he said at last, “but two nights from now I’ll meet you back here.”
He gave me the picture book. “Don’t lose that,” he advised. “It belongs to my family.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?” I asked.
“You’re supposed to practice until we meet again,” he said.
I made my way back to the dorm. It was late, and there were no students around, or at least awake. I wondered how many of them had been questioned by the head of security that evening as the authorities reviewed everything they thought they knew, trying to find weak links in stories and evidence as to who might be behind the violence.
Most of the girls in the dorm were already asleep. I fell heavily into bed and closed my eyes. It was time for me to sleep as well.
In the morning I dragged myself awake and made for the kitchen. As usual, and just like on my walk back to the dorm the night before, I didn’t see anyone around at first.
Then I ran into Lewis at the stairs.
“Morning,” he said cheerfully.
“Any news from last night?” I asked.
“Like what? But no, not really. I was here last year. I know that surprises you. But I was questioned before. Same sort of stuff. Where was I? Had I seen anything? Did I know anything? Was I friends with any of the victims and all that kind of thing. I said I was friends with one prince, and to be friends with two would be excessive.”
“You’re always against excess, aren’t you?” I asked.
He grinned. “Something like that. Anyway, I don’t think they’re going to get anywhere talking to students, partly because they’ve decided they might have a suspect in mind, and it isn’t a student. I mean, it isn’t even anyone who’s part of the castle,” he said.
“Who, then?” I asked.
“The riders in the mountains. I mean, it makes sense. They’re known to hate the castle. We don’t get along with them. The guards here have checked the students again and again. So maybe it wasn’t a student or anyone who lives in the castle or even on the grounds at all,” he said.
I stood still to let that sink in as Lewis walked into the kitchen ahead of me. Every instinct I had told me it wasn’t the riders attacking us.
But would anyone listen to me?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Not just cuffs, but the memory of shackles fed my desire never to go back to where I had come from. The desire beat inside me now; it fed and grew until it drowned out everything else.
I was never going back to that life. But now the question was, what life would I have instead?
“We all have to join organizations,” said Esmeralda. Out of the corner of my eye I could tell she was glaring at me. “We’ve been putting it off, but we have to do it.”
Vayvin nodded in agreement.
We were sitting in the atrium before class. In an effort not to let the killer win, we were going outside again today to test our mettle on the battlefield. I was in no way looking forward to it, but at least this time it wasn’t raining.
“What organization are you going to join?” I asked Esmeralda.
“I was thinking the newspaper,” she said. “I feel as though I’m a reasonable voice on campus. I might as well share it with others.”
“It’s just that it’s a low bar as to what’s reasonable,” Vayvin said.
“I know you think so, but nobody is impres
sed that you’re part of the band,” said Esmeralda.
Vayvin stuck her tongue out. “That’s exactly how I want it,” she said. “If it were impressive, then the killer would take notice. But nobody likes band members.”
“What about you?” Esmeralda asked, turning to me. I was picking at my food, moving it around on the plate but not eating anything.
“I work in the kitchen in the morning, I go to classes, I study. I don’t feel like I have time for an organization on top of all that,” I said.
“Well you better make time, because we don’t have a choice,” Vayvin pointed out.
Students were encouraged to leave the castle by different exits after breakfast. There were guards lining each exit, and the shields were up again.
There was no sign of trouble this morning as the freshmen made their way to the pond. With the lake glistening and the waterfall sparkling, physical tests could easily be done there.
The tests started with knives then moved to staff work, and later to wooden practice swords. Bows and arrows were usually involved in the testing, but that part had been canceled after the attack at the beginning of the year.
The knives were fun; I enjoyed being able to hide them all over my body. But my favorite weapon was the sword. It was heavy in my hand and I didn’t use it very well, but I still felt as though a sword was my best choice if I had to defend myself.
All the teachers were outside with us. Clouda and Jinelle stood by talking quietly while we worked. Even some upperclassmen had come out, including Cory and Kayka.
Kayka was the only older student I had ever talked to, and even that had been brief. At the moment she was busy showing some freshmen how to throw their knives properly, end over end.
For now I went and got a practice sword. I needed both hands to wield the blasted thing, and though some of the guys actually liked a two-handed grip, I thought it was stupid. I kept the sword in my left hand for now.
Lewis was practiced with a sword. Now he was going against a lot of the better guys, including the princes.
But it also turned out that Prince Orlando was good with a sword, albeit a small one.
“I can’t keep going against so many tall opponents,” he complained. “I want to spar with someone smaller,” he demanded, his eyes scanning the girls.
Normally somebody would have shoved him back into place, but since he was a prince, that wasn’t about to happen.
Eventually his eyes landed on me, and he pointed right at my chest with his sword. “She’s new here, so she’s not going to kill me, at least not for the reason everybody else is trying to kill me. Spar with me,” he commanded.
When several of his bodyguards closed in behind him, I recognized the threat for what it was. If I harmed Prince Orlando, they would do plenty more to harm me. Not that I cared about Prince Orlando in the least; he was a whiny princeling who probably wasn’t going to make it to the end of the year. But I was unlikely to harm him in any case.
Before one of the teachers could object, I tightened my grip on my practice sword, marched into place, and set my feet as we’d been taught.
Prince Orlando struck almost before I was ready, forcing me to I jump backward. It was clear that he had spent years training with swords. My training, on the other hand, had lasted weeks.
He came on in an onslaught of sparkling blade, fury in his eyes.
My wooden sword was no match for him. I managed to block him again and again, if clumsily, but he was swinging so hard that each blow chipped my sword.
If any spectators felt concerned, they kept quiet about it. Then again, who would argue with a prince?
I knew I couldn’t beat him on skill, so I started paying closer attention to his movements. We might be about the same size, but I was faster.
When he danced into me and then away, I noticed that he ended up slightly off balance, leaving an opening to one side of his body.
After a little while, my arm was going slick from sweat. I tightened my grip on the sword, but the amount of energy and power it was taking to block his strikes was making it increasingly hard for me to keep going.
I waited for the prince to do that dance again, the one that exposed his ribs, hoping he’d get back to it before I had to surrender.
And there it was.
Without thinking, I lunged.
But I had forgotten about his armor. There was the smallest of spaces where a sword would fit, but not a wooden one. And you wouldn’t send a sword through that small space anyhow, unless you were trying to kill him.
My sword banged off his side, and I had shifted my weight so far forward that I fell in that direction. The prince raised the butt of his own sword high in the air, aiming for my exposed head. When he brought it down I closed my eyes, trying to prepare for the blow. But instead, all I heard was a clash of metal.
Batham had stepped forward and thrust his sword between my head and Prince Orlando’s weapon.
The prince’s eyes were wild with rage. “You dare defy a prince?” he screamed at Batham. “And you a pathetic bodyguard?” he screamed again.
“I told him to do it. He would not dare defy a prince,” said Prince Reidar, taking two steps forward with Colly by his side, continuing to guard him.
All the guards and both princes held glimmering swords, made quicker and more deadly by magic.
Slowly I rolled away from Prince Orlando. His eyes skated over to me as if his prey was getting away. I would remember that look for the rest of my life.
For a split second I found myself wishing that the killer had aimed at a different target when he set up the explosion yesterday. Then I was on my feet, outwardly calm but inwardly seething. Keeping an eye on Prince Orlando the whole time, I went back to get the wooden sword, intent on making a show of not showing fear.
Inside me, the wellspring of magic was overflowing everything. There was power pouring in every direction.
“Get hold of yourself,” someone murmured to me. I turned and saw Kayka, standing nearby with Clouda.
She turned to Clouda and asked, “Do you want me to take her for a walk?”
“Yeah, tell her to scorch some earth while you do it,” said Clouda, her eyes on the guards.
Kayka took my arm comfortingly, but I was surprised at the strength in her grip. All year I had thought she was a much better fighter than you’d think from looking at her; apparently looks were deceiving. For example, Prince Orlando didn’t look evil, but it turned out that he was.
I allowed Kayka to lead me away to the other side of the castle, where some upperclassmen were practicing. They waved at Kayka, but when they looked at me their eyes were troubled.
“You’d think they’d be happy to see you, knowing that you’re not the killer,” Kayka laughed.
“I suppose,” I said. I was still dragging the wooden sword in my hand. Somehow I didn’t want to release it.
“I can take that,” she said. “Don’t worry. You’ll get to use a real sword soon enough.”
“Not if he had killed me,” I grumbled.
Kayka threw her head back and laughed again. “No, I suppose not. Don’t mind him. He’s just afraid,” she said.
“What makes him think we aren’t all afraid?” I muttered.
“Good point,” she said, more seriously.
“Right,” I muttered.
Kayka threw back her head and laughed again.
“What did she mean by scorch the earth?” I asked.
“She merely meant that you needed to blow off some steam,” she said.
“Maybe I do,” I admitted. I felt that sparkling inside me, the light dancing everywhere.
“Excuse me a minute,” I said.
I stepped away from Kayka and went to stand by myself facing the mountains with my back to everything else. Carefully I reached for some of the sparkle I felt inside, the twinkling magic, the lights that glowed brighter sometimes like a fire being fed dry logs with a shovel.
Brighter, like chains of lightning.
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I closed my eyes but imagined the sky flashing brightly, wheels in the air like birds splashing through clouds.
Power.
The power accumulated, growing, moving, somehow connected to the air but also to the thick brown soil.
Before my eyes were images of rain, and I felt drops on my face despite the fact that the day was bright and sunny.
My hands lifted up higher, for the first time really connecting to the power that burned inside me, the power that had been kept back for so long. The sparkle didn’t stop until the ball of power was big and blinding.
I wanted to move it forward, to explode the world, to help me forget everything that had happened. I wanted to turn the fire into a blaze that would burn every tree and every blade of grass for miles.
Everything else slipped away.
I forgot about everybody around me, behind me, practicing for battles that were sure to come.
I forgot about the excellent swordsmen as the flashing power inside me grew and grew, until it was desperate to get out, desperate to explode.
The iron control on my magic slipped. Now I understood that the cuffs I had worn for all these years had kept a handle on a power that was desperate and wild, a volcanic and crushing magic rushing to freedom with a force like an avalanche crashing down a mountain.
I had no idea where it would land or what it would hit or how it would break. I imagined steeds of fire racing across the land and a powerful swirl cascading endlessly.
The wind started to howl and pull at my clothing and hair, but I kept my eyes tightly shut now, feeling wind against my face.
Not rain, though. Not yet. The rain would do the unleashing. The rain would break apart any control I had left on my power.
There was so much magic to come out, and yet there was a tiny part of me that felt strange, as if it was still locked away. A golden key floated through my mind like one of those bright birds wheeling.
There was no sparkle to this power. It just started to flap away, slowly. I fought the surging magic. I tried to pull it down one last time, but it rose and exploded.
Noble Fae Academy: Year One Page 16
